Links to the Forums

The forums can be found in the site footer under "Community". Until July 5, 2017, they could be accessed via a link in the header. The removal of the link caused many complaints about how new users would not be able to find the forums.[2] Currently, the link is still in the header of the Wiki, since the Wiki's skin is handled separately from the Scratch website's Skin.

Menu Bar

The menu bar for the forums is below the words "Discuss Scratch", under the Scratch logo and has the following options:

Search: This lets a user search for any keyword or user in the forums, with multiple choices to narrow down the search. However, the search button is no longer functional. It is not a priority to be fixed, and instead, users can put "site: scratch.mit.edu/discuss/ Search term " into their search engine to search the forums. Examples of search engines include Google and Bing.

Forum Categories

There are many forum categories. They are grouped as "Welcome to Scratch", "Making Scratch Projects", "About Scratch", "Interests Beyond Scratch", and "Scratch in Other Languages".

Each group of forum categories can be minimized or expanded by clicking the + or - sign at the top right of the group of forum categories.

Welcome to Scratch

The Welcome to Scratch category has the following two forums:

Announcements: "Updates from the Scratch Team." Only the Scratch Team can post new topics here. Whenever there is a major update to the website, they will post about it for everyone to know — these updates can consist of new versions of Scratch, website changes, downtime, Scratch events, or a survey. Topics here are always closed by a member of the scratch team after they have been open for a while.

New Scratchers: "A forum to welcome New Scratchers to the Scratch community. If you are new to Scratch, please post to say hello!" Created for new users, this is where New Scratchers can introduce themselves or ask simple questions. Scratchers can also greet new members of Scratch.

Making Scratch Projects

Help with Scripts: "Need help with your Scratch project? Ask here!" This is where Scratchers and New Scratchers can ask questions about scripts for their project.

Show and Tell: "Tell everyone about your projects and studios." Filled with advertisements, this is where to advertise projects and studios, or check out other users' advertisements.

Project Ideas: "A place to give and get help thinking of project ideas." This forum is generally used for helping others and asking others for ideas on Scratch projects, as well as discussing projects that are currently being made.

Collaboration: "Join with others to work together on Scratch projects!" This forum is generally used for talking about different organizations, collaborations, and companies Scratchers have made to create projects together.

Requests: "Looking for something? Want to offer your skills to others?" This forum is generally used for requesting art for games and the website, as well as programming help. Many users open up shops to offer their skills to others, as well.

About Scratch

Questions About Scratch: "Post general questions about Scratch here." This is where to ask normal questions about Scratch. Those questions may ask for programming help, questions on past versions of Scratch; anything about Scratch can be posted here, not just questions.

Suggestions: "Discuss ideas for making improvements to Scratch." Most Scratchers have an idea they would like, and this is where to share it. However, Scratch Team member Lightnin posted a stickied topic explaining how to make more helpful suggestions.

Bugs and Glitches: "Found a bug in Scratch? Describe it here!" Nothing is perfectly free from bugs, so a way to find them is necessary. This is where to discuss problems, and possibly find a reason why it is occurring.

Connecting to the Physical World: "Topics related to Pico Boards, LEGO WeDo (tm), and connecting Scratch projects to the physical world." This forum is for discussing Sensor Boards and PicoBoards, and almost anything involving them. This forum is rather inactive, due to the small amount of users who have purchased a PicoBoard.

Interests Beyond Scratch

Things I'm Making and Creating: "Discuss things you are creating or exploring outside of Scratch, like art, music, programming languages, or crafts." This forum allows Scratchers to discuss any project that they are working on, even if it is not related to Scratch.

Things I'm Reading and Playing: "Discuss books, TV, movies, art, music, or videogames that inspire you." A relaxing forum enjoyed by most Scratchers, many subjects are discussed here. Topics should not be about TBGs.

Scratch Around the World

Because Scratch is used all around the world, there are forums for other languages. The languages are:

African

German

Spanish

French

Chinese

Polish

Japanese

Netherlands

Portuguese

Italian

Hebrew

Korean

Norwegian

Turkish

Greek

Russian

Catalan

Indonesian

Note:

Messages in the wrong language may be moved or deleted.

There are two other forums for another purpose:

Translating Scratch: "Come here to discuss translation of the Scratch interface, website, and resources materials. Please discuss in English if possible, so we can better help you with translations." This is where to discuss translations; for example, a mistaken translation should be pointed out here.

Other Languages: "For languages not listed above" This is where a Scratcher can talk in any language that does not have its own forum. For example, a Ukrainian Scratcher could open a Ukrainian topic here.

Making A Topic Inside A Forum

To make a new topic in a certain forum, click on the desired forum, and select the button New topic. Fill in the subject and first post describing its purpose. When writing a post, the formatting is very similar to writing an article in Scratch Wiki.

Note:

Only make a new topic in a forum if it is important or hasn't been mentioned before.

Signature

A forum signature is the message that is always displayed at the bottom of one's posts. Images, often used for advertising projects, can be inserted into a signature. Images can only be 150 px maximum. At the bottom of the discussion home page is a link that reads "Change your signature". When this is clicked, it sends the user to a page where a new signature can be entered and submitted.[3]

Uses

The forum signature can have any type of text or pictures in it, providing that it is appropriate for the community, and any links are non-commercial. Examples of what can be put in a signature include:

Advertisements for projects, shops, collaborations, etc.

A favorite quote

Information about the user

A drawing by the user

News the user wants to share

Links to user's creations

The number of creative ways signatures have been used is amazing. Scratchers have programmed APIs in PHP to display special images which change automatically based on online information. These images can give up-to-date data on topics like a user's most recent projects, its Project Statistics, whether or not a user is online, or even a user's post count.[4] Similarly, Scratchers have created custom Scratch blocks whose text is their username, or the name of a project.

Private Forums

Private forums are used for many parts of the community. Though those kinds of forums are very limited, it's very useful to discuss certain things in the community. Requesting a private forum will probably not result, because it is limited to certain parts of the community.

Following Topics

The button that allows following a topic

The button to unfollow a topic.

Users have the capability of following topics of their choice by clicking the blue "Follow Discussion" button at the top of a forum page. When following a topic, whenever someone posts on that topic, the followers will receive a notification telling them so. By default, when a user creates a topic, it is automatically followed by the creator, but one can unfollow a topic. When a topic that is followed is opened, instead of the "Follow Discussion" button a grey "Unfollow Discussion" button at the top will appear, in which one can click to opt out of receiving notifications on new posts.

Mobile Viewing

A screenshot of the mobile forums on a Kindle Fire HD

At the bottom of every forum page is the option to switch to the mobile forums. This only works for the forums, as the rest of the Scratch website only uses standard view. When switched to mobile viewing, the text in users' posts is adjusted to be more legible. Profile pictures and signatures do not display in the mobile view, which may speed up the time for a page to load. The blocks plugin currently does not render when in the mobile view. To switch back to standard view, click the "Standard" link at the bottom.

BBCode

BBCode is a collection of formatting tags that are used to format users' forum posts. BBCode is based on the same principal as, and is very similar to, HTML. BBCode can used for things such as text formatting, links, and images.

Uploading Images

To upload images to the Scratch forum, an approved image hosting service must be used.

Editing Posts

Posts can be edited to update or add more information, or to fix formatting or grammar errors. The first post can be edited by the author to change the topic name. New Scratchers cannot edit their posts, for the purpose of preventing users from saying something mean or inappropriate and changing it after other users see it.

Viewing All of One's Posts

A rather hidden feature on the forums is the ability to view, for a logged-in user, all of their posts and topics. These can be accessed by scrolling to the bottom and clicking on the "Show your topics/posts" links. "Topics" is a separate link from "posts" and will display all the various topics the user has posted on. It is not restricted to topics the user actually created. Clicking on the post link will display all the user's posts in multi-page format in chronological order from newest to oldest. Editing a post does not affect its chronological positioning in the sequence of a user's posts.

Post Count

Under one's username on the forums, the number of posts that one has is shown. With this, users can tell how much experience with the forums others have.

Here are the possible post counts shown on the forums:

1-100 posts: The exact number of posts is shown

100-500 posts: The amount of posts is shown as 100+ posts

500-1,000 posts: The amount of posts is shown as 500+ posts

1000+ posts: The amount of posts is shown as 1000+ posts

Controversy

Post counts are somewhat controversial on Scratch, as some Scratchers want more accurate post counts,[5] while other want post counts removed completely.[6] However, the general consensus is that the current system works fine, because it prevents bragging and stops Scratchers with few posts feeling isolated among Scratchers with thousands of posts.[7][8]

Closing a Topic

If a topic has been open for 24 hours, the person that created the topic can close it. This disallows editing existing posts, and new posts cannot be created either. Only members of the Scratch Team can re-open topics. However, for moderation purposes, posts can still be reported.

If a topic needs to be closed, but the currently viewing user does not have the permission to do so, press the Report button next to any post and request the topic to be closed — as the Scratch Team can close any topic.

Non-Scratch Team Re-Opened Topics

There was a now defunct method to re-open forum topics with a URL.[citation needed] This was patched up due to the fact that this function was made only for Scratch Team members to use and access. If someone tries this method, it will no longer work.

Sticky

A sticky is a forum topic that is stuck to the top of its forum, and does not have to be bumped back up. Moderators and the Scratch Team can sticky a thread. They are used to make important topics readily available. A Scratcher can report a topic to be stickied using the Report button, to let a moderator know about it. Some examples of stickies would be the Collaboration Directory or the Helpful topics for Questions about Scratch stickies. In forums where there are too many stickies, the ITopic system is used, but some forums use both systems.

YouTube Videos

For safety reasons, any YouTube videos linked to on the forums will open the video in a Scratch YouTube viewer, in which one watches the video on Scratch without viewing the YouTube website and video comments. To make a link to a YouTube video that will open up in a Scratch YouTube viewer, you have to type in your browser "/scratch.mit.edu/discuss/youtube/" and put the video code after it.

Technical Information

The Scratch Forums are currently based on DjangoBB, a forum framework based on FluxBB in Python.

In the old forums (see Scratch 1.4 Forums below), the forum software was FluxBB, written in PHP.

Scratch 1.4 Forums

With the release of Scratch 2.0, the forums were started fresh. The old forums were archived and can be seen here. The current forums contain posts made during the alpha and beta phases of 2.0.